All Forum Posts by: Jason Hull

This.

There are very few magic shortcuts to get into real estate investing, particularly when you don't have the safety net of regular income earned through working to backstop when your plans go invariably wrong.

If you don't require that much to live, have you thought about working on a construction crew? That way, you get a small paycheck, and you learn the ins and outs of how houses work and how to repair them. I find that my best deals are either where there's pending doom for the owners and they need to get out yesterday, or the house is beaten down like Peter McNeeley fighting Mike Tyson (did I just date myself?). In the latter case, knowing how to do the work yourself can save you a lot of out-of-pocket expenses.

If that's not the route you want to go, then I'd be hitting up my weak connections extremely hard to try to find that next job. The math says that there aren't that many people out there who will get rich off of real estate; many more will fund their retirements the old-fashioned way of earning wages and investing some of that money for when they quit working. Build a solid base that way and then peel off some for RE investing.